Thursday, 6 December 2012

Carrots, Canterbury and old Chums

The last few weeks seem to have flown by and we are into December already. It is very cold here in Kent as it is all over the UK. We seem to have our own little microclimate in Westgate and the weather forecasters so often get it wrong. Alan has been busy harvesting the last of the crops from the garden. This week's carrots came in various shapes and sizes - definately would not meet EU regulations. I will make no comment about the big boy in the front of the photo!

Posing carrots!

It seems that carrots are growing well in Toronto also

Lilah should be able to see in the dark!

Tess, Janice, Tony

We enjoyed a weekend with friends Janice & Tony who came down from Stokesley in N Yorkshire. We had a lot to catch up with as you can imagine much vino was consumed with good food. We had a very enjoyable day in Canterbury. We found a little cafe/bar that was getting in the Christmas spirit. The decorations were not finished yet but it was already so over-the-top and tacky that it looked really great! We then had a good meal in Deeson's which is one of our favourite restaurants. We took them on a whistlestop round the coast but in it wind and heavy rain we were not able to do much walking.

This week we have met up with Harry, Vicky & Gareth which of course entailed another lunch out! Great to see all and thanks for the gorgeous plants and Ethan's Arsenal ball!

Healthwise things have been fairly quiet (this is good). Walking in the cold wind and damp is difficult but getting out each day is still a priority. Emotionally thing have been getting difficult but I am taking steps to remedy this. In my last blog (17 Nov) I mentioned Peter who had gone into a hospice - sadly he too passed away and his funeral was this week. Sending love to his wife Elaine and family. Other meso warriors Jan and Steve continue to do battle with chemo.

We are all watching this story as mesothelioma needs many more trials and innovative treatments if there is ever to be a cure:

Conservative peer Lord Saatchi has launched a campaign to speed up
cancer cures by increasing freedom for doctors to stray away from
standard medical procedures without fear of litigation.

Lord Saatchi, whose wife Josephine Hart, pictured, died from peritoneal cancer last year, launched a private members' bill - the Medical Innovation Bill - at the House of Lords on Monday.

The law in its current form 'provides no inducement to progress' in
curing cancer because it means that any deviation by a doctor from
standard procedure leaves them open to claims of medical negligence,
Lord Saatchi believes.

‘This is a deterrent to innovation in cancer treatment,’ he said.

‘Standard procedure is clearly defined in law as the practice which
would be followed by a group of medical practitioners skilled in the
particular area of medicine in question.’

Through the Medical Innovation Bill, Lord Saatchi said he wishes to
encourage doctors to seek improvement on the standard procedure. One of
the bill’s purposes is to ‘codify existing best practice as to decisions
by doctors to innovate where evidence-based treatment or management is
not optimal or appropriate, because the available evidence is
insufficient or uncertain’.

Joined at the launch by fellow Conservative peer and chairman of the
Institute of Cancer Research Lord Ryder and Oxford University’s ovarian
cancer specialist Professor Ahmed, Lord Saatchi admitted that the Bill
was unlikely to become law.

He said it was unlikely to be successful unless it was picked up and backed by the government.

He added: ‘It is more likely that the government is going to say "all
is well, we are investing tremendous amounts in research, there’s great
work going on. We in the government are fully aware of the problem and
there is no government on Earth that could be doing more than we are
doing therefore this bill is completely unnecessary".

‘That is what they are going to say unless we talk them out of that
and we are all going to try very hard. Whether we succeed or not I don’t
know.